First Consul Napoleon Bonaparte moved into the Tuileries Palace on 19 February 1800 and immediately began to re-establish calm and order after the years of uncertainty and terror of the French Revolution. He made peace with the Catholic Church; masses were held again in the Cathedral of Notre Dame, priests were allowed to wear ecclesiastical clothing again, and churches to ring their bells.Héron de Villefosse, René, Histoire de Paris, p. 299 To re-establish order in the unruly city, Bonaparte abolished the elected position of the Mayor of Paris, and replaced it with a Prefect of the Seine and a Prefect of Police, both appointed by him. Each of the twelve arrondissements had its own mayor, but their power was limited to enforcing the decrees of Napoleon's ministers.

After he crowned himself Emperor on December 2, 1804, Napoleon began a series of projects to make Paris into an imperial capital to rival ancient Rome. He built monuments to French military glory, including the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel, the column in Place Vendôme, and the future church of the Madeleine, intended as a temple to military heroes; and began the Arc de Triomphe. To improve the circulation of traffic in central Paris, he built a wide new street, Rue de Rivoli, from the Place de la Concorde to the Place des Pyramides. He made important improvements to the city's sewers and water supply, including a canal from the Ourcq River, and the construction of a dozen new fountains, including the Fontaine du Palmier on Place du Châtelet; and three new bridges; the Pont d'Iéna, Pont d'Austerlitz, including the Pont des Arts (1804), the first iron bridge in Paris. The Louvre became the Napoleon Museum, in a wing of the former palace, displaying many works of art he brought back from his military campaigns in Italy, Austria, Holland and Spain; and he militarized and re-organized the Grandes écoles, to train engineers and administrators.

Between 1801 and 1811, the population of Paris grew from 546,856 to 622,636, nearly the population before the French Revolution, and by 1817 it reached 713,966. During Napoleon's reign, Paris suffered from war and blockade, but retained its position as a European capital of fashion, art, science, education, and commerce. After his downfall in 1814, the city was occupied by the Prussian, English and German armies. The symbols of the monarchy were restored, but most of Napoleon's monuments and some of his new institutions, including the form of city government, the fire department, and the modernized Grandes écoles, survived.

The Parisians

According to the census taken by the government, the population of Paris in 1801 was 546,856 persons By 1811, it had grown to 622,636.

The wealthiest Parisians lived in the western neighborhoods of the city, along the Champs-Élysées, and the neighborhood around Place Vendome. The poorest Parisians were concentrated in the east, in two neighborhoods; around Mount Sainte-Genevieve in the modern 7th arrondissement, and in the faubourg Saint-Marcel and faubourg Saint-Antoine.

The population of the city varied by season; between March and November, 30-40,000 workers to Paris from the French regions; stonemasons and stone cutters who came from the Massif Central and Normandy to work on building construction, weavers and dyers from Belgium and Flanders, and unskilled workers from the Alpine regions, who worked as street sweepers and porters. They would return home during the winter months with what they had earned.

The old and new aristocracy

At the top of the social structure of Paris was the aristocracy, both old and new. In 1788, before the Revolution, the old nobility in Paris had numbered 15–17,000 persons, about three percent of the population. Those who escaped execution during the terror fled abroad to England, Germany, Spain, Russia, and even the United States. Most returned during the reign of Napoleon, and many found positions in the new Imperial court and government. They built new houses, mostly in the area around the Champs-Élysées. They were joined by a new aristocracy created by Napoleon, consisting of his generals, ministers and courtiers, as well as bankers, industrialists, and those who furnished military supplies; about three thousand persons altogether. The new aristocrats often made alliances by marriage with old families, who needed money. One old aristocrat, the Duke of Montmorency, told Marshal Jean-de-Dieu Soult, who had been made a duke by Napoleon, "You are a duke, but you have no ancestors!" Soult replied, "It's true. We are the ancestors."

The wealthiest and most distinguished Parisians during the first Empire purchased town houses between the Palais Royal and the Etoile, especially on the rue du Faubourg Saint Honoré and rue de la Chaussée-d'Antin: Joseph Bonaparte, the older brother of the Emperor, lived at 31 rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, his sister Pauline at number 39, Marshal Louis-Alexandre Berthier at number 35, Marshal Bon-Adrien Jeannot de Moncey in number 63, and Marshal Joachim Murat in number 55, which is now the Élysée Palace, the residence of the Presidents of France. Juliette Récamier lived at number 9 Chaussée d'Antin, General Jean Victor Marie Moreau at number 20, and Cardinal Fesch, uncle of Napoleon, at number 68. Other notables of the First Empire settled on the left bank, in the faubourg Saint-Germain. Eugène de Beauharnais, son of the Empress Josephine, lived at 78 rue de Lille, Lucien Bonaparte, younger brother of the Emperor, at 14 rue Saint-Dominique, and Marshal Louis-Nicolas Davout at 57 and later 59 on the same street.

The wealthy and the middle class Below the old and new aristocracy, there was a large middle class of about 150,000 persons, accounting for about a quarter of the city's population. The lower middle class included small shopkeepers, artisans who had a few employees, government employees, and those in the liberal professions; doctors, lawyers, and accountants. The new upper middle class included Napoleon's generals and high officials, the most successful doctors and lawyers, and a new class of wealthy Parisians who made their money selling supplies to the army, by buying then reselling nationalized property, such as churches; and by speculating in the stock market. It also included a handful of individuals who had begun the first industrial enterprises in Paris: chemical factories, textile mills, and factories making machinery. The newly wealthy, like the aristocracy, tended to live in the west of the city, between Place Vendôme and Etoile, or on the left bank in the Faubourg Saint-Germain.

The artisans and workers About 90,000 Parisians, men, women and often children, earned their living as manual workers. According to an 1807 survey by the prefect of police, the largest number worked in the food trades; there were 2250 bakers, 608 pastry chefs, 1269 butchers, 1566 restaurateurs, 16,111 lemonadiers, and 11,832 grocers, and many more in more specialized trades. Twenty-four thousand worked in the building trades, as masons, carpenters, plumbers and other trades. Thirty thousand worked in the clothing trades, including tailors, shoemakers, barbers, and hat-makers; another twelve thousand women worked as seamstresses and cleaning clothing. Twelve thousand worked in furniture workshops; eleven thousand in the metal industry. Fifty percent of the workers were younger than eighteen or older than forty; during the Empire, a large proportion of workers were conscripted into the army.

The artisans and workers were concentrated in the eastern neighborhoods. The faubourg Saint-Antoine included the new glass factory of Reuilly and factories making porcelain, pottery, wallpaper, breweries, and many smaller workshops making furniture, locks, and metalwork. The other major industrial neighborhood was the faubourg Saint-Marcel on the left bank, along the banks of the Bievre River, where the tanneries and dyeing workshops were located. Many artisans in these neighborhoods had just two rooms; the front room, with a window, served as the workshop, while the entire family lived in the darker back room. The working-class neighborhoods were densely populated; while the Champs-Élysées neighborhoods had 27,5 persons per hectare, in 1801 there were 1500 persons living in a hectare in the Arcis quarter, which included the Place de Grève, Châtelet and Saint-Jacques de la Boucherie, and a density of 1000 to 1500 persons around Les Halles, rue Saint-Denis and rue Saint-Martin. About sixty to seventy percent of the inhabitants of faubourgs Saint-Antoine and Saint-Marcel were born outside of Paris, mostly in the French provinces. Most came from the north, Picardy, Champagne, the Loire Valley, Berri, and Normandy.

Servants Domestic servants, two-thirds of whom were women, made up about fifteen to twenty percent of the population of the capital. Before the Revolution they had worked largely for the nobility, whose families sometimes had as many as thirty servants. During the Empire they were employed more commonly by the new nobility, the newly wealthy and middle class. Upper-middle-class families often had three servants; families of artisans and shopkeepers usually had one. Living conditions of servants depended largely upon the personality of the master, but were never easy. Napoleon abolished the death penalty which previously could be given to a servant who stole from his master, but any servant who was even suspected of stealing would never be able to get another job. Any servant who became pregnant, married or not, could be dismissed immediately.

Prostitutes

Prostitution was not legal, but was very common during the Empire. The prostitutes were often women who came from the provinces seeking work, or women who had part-time jobs but could not survive on their small salaries. In 1810, when Paris had a population of about 600,000 persons, the Minister of Police, Savary, estimated that there were 8000 to 9000 women working in maisons closes, or houses of prostitution; 3000 to 4000 who worked out of a rented room; 4000 who worked out of doors, in parks, courtyards, or even cemeteries; and 7000 to 8000 who were prostitutes when money ran short, who were otherwise employed in sewing, selling bouquets of flowers, or other low-paid professions. This accounted in total for five to eight percent of the female population of the city. According to one account from 1814, they had their own social hierarchy; the courtesans at the top, whose clients were exclusively the noble or wealthy; then a class composed of actresses, dancers, and those from the theater world; then semi-respectable prostitutes from the middle class who sometimes received clients at home, often with the husband's consent; then unemployed or working-women who needed money, down to the lowest level, who were found in the city's worst neighborhoods, the Port du Blé, the rue Purgée, and rue Planche Mibray.Deterville, Le Palais-Royal ou les filles en bon fortune, (1815), Paris, Lécrivain. Cited In Fierro, page 67-68.

The poor